Flashback
by Britani Gael
Summary: Jim has a lot less fun when he tries the Kobayashi Maru for the first time.


**Title**: Flashback

**Author**: Brittany

**Fandom**: Star Trek (2009)

**Words**: ~2000

**Summary**: Jim has a lot less fun when he tries the Kobayashi Maru for the first time.

**Author's Notes**: Very few spoilers, though they're obviously gonna be there. Also, this is making me all nostalgic, because the first fanfiction I ever wrote almost ten years about was a Star Trek: The Original Series fic.

*

"Okay, let's do this. Sulu, take us to warp … does it actually matter?" Jim drummed his fingers on the armrests of the coveted captain's chair as he chatted casually with the helmsman. "It doesn't, does it?" He looked towards the one-way glass that made up one of the walls, which is where their professors were watching the show.

"_Cadet Kirk_—" The gravely voice of Captain Meyer came out over the intercom, temporarily halting the beeps and chimes of the mock up computers and displayed on the bridge. "_—this is a simulation, and you are to at least _pretend_ to take it seriously_."

The computers start up again.

"Right," Jim says. "Fine. Take us to warp … eight."

"… Eight, sir?"

"What, too much?"

"Goddamnit, Jim!" McCoy snapped, finally. Not because he really knew how fast warp eight was, but because he was sick of watching his friend mouth off and screw around when everyone in the room was essentially a captive and unwilling audience—himself included. "Knock if off, and quit making up numbers. _Please_."

Jim leaned back in his seat, comfortably, and he glanced over at McCoy and grinned. But at least he shut up.

The new test was introduced at the Academy not six days ago, and Jim Kirk wasn't the first person to take the Kobayashi Maru. He'd been disappointed, because that's what he'd wanted, but it'd quickly come out that the other two students had failed, and failed badly. And so Jim had confidently announced that he'd definitely be the first to pass.

He'd picked his crew in less than a day—and practically at random, as far as Bones could tell. Before he could protest, or maybe point out the fact that he was most definitely _not_ a science officer, he'd found himself behind the computer next to Jim's captain chair. "You know I can't make heads or tails of these blasted readings," he said.

Jim rolled his eyes. "Just play along, Bones."

"Like you're doing?"

"Sir," the communications officer said, a notable lack of enthusiasm in her voice. It might have even have been a note of sarcasm. "A Federation ship is hailing us, from … Gamma Hydra, Section Ten…?"

"Let's hear it, Uhura," Jim said, and in the back of his mind Bones was wondering how many points he'd be marked off for flippancy and general failure to observe protocol. It would probably be a lot. "Put it up on, you know…" He twirled his fingers in the air, like he couldn't think of the word, which McCoy didn't buy for a minute. "—the intercom."

The woman didn't even look up, but she moved to do it.

The scratchy voice filled the bridge: "—_Imperative! This is the Kobayashi Maru, we have struck a gravitic mine, our hull is penetrated and we have sustained many casualties_—" At that point, the message faded away into static and distortion.

Jim had the decency to look captainy for almost a few seconds in a row before he said, "Come on, man, this is easy."

"Jim," McCoy said again, quietly, his tone both warning and weary. He knew he was nagging. It drove him crazy, but whenever he was around this kid he could feel himself changing, somehow turning into a pale imitation of his own mother. She'd been a dear sweet woman but _Lord_ she'd never been able to let anything go.

"Let's go pick them up," Jim said, ignoring him. "Plot a course for—"

"For the Neutral Zone, sir?" the helmsman asked, hesitantly.

"Sure," Jim said. "Why not? And put it onscreen, would you?"

The faintly glowing screen at the front of the bridge came to life, the image sharp and clear enough that it could've been a window—the blackness of space looked appropriately dark and lonely, white pricks of light were scattered across the picture. In the midst of it all, tilted at an odd, distressing angle, was a civilian class ship, and its designation was visible from here: _Kobayashi Maru_.

"Alright," Jim said. "We look close enough. Beam them up."

"It can't be that easy," McCoy said.

"Why not? I wouldn't mind."

"Captain! Look!"

The image on the screen wavered, and McCoy looked down at his control panel to see what was going wrong, not that he planned on understanding a thing it was telling him. But the gasp in the room quickly told him that the problem had nothing to do the simulation, and he looked up just in time to see three alien looking vessels appear out of thin air.

"Sir, it appears that three Klingdon Cruises have decloaked and—"

"Yeah, I see them, Sulu!" Jim sat straighter up in his chair and said, "Red alert! Shields up! All hands to battle stations, arm the photon torpedoes and distract them before they notice the civilian ship—"

"We're under fire, sir!"

Explosions bloomed across the screen, and at the same moment the entire bridge shuddered, which McCoy thought was a clever touch. Clever enough that McCoy stumbled and banged his head hard on an errant display monitor. "Oh, for the love of Pete!" he growled.

Jim pulled himself back into his seat, and across the room other cadets were getting to their feet. "Status report!" he shouted.

"We've taken extensive damage to decks eleven through twenty-six, Captain, and our shields are holding at twenty-six percent."

"The civilian ship?"

"Unharmed. Captain," the helmsman started. "This ship isn't outfitted to take on three Klingon battle ships—"

"Do they _make_ any other kind?" McCoy interjected, rubbing his forehead.

"We're not leaving those civilians stranded," Jim said, speaking with real authority for the first time in this exercise. "Divert thruster power to—"

"They're firing again!"

This time, the bridge crew braced themselves—and they did it again when they saw the familiar flare of the Klingon's photon torpedoes. "Shields at fifteen percent, Captain!"

"Direct all power to the forward shields."

The ship groaned loudly as they suffered another hit. "Forward shield power down to eight percent…" McCoy didn't even know who was talking anymore, it was had to tell any of these cadets apart with the alarms and displays and bells and whistles and god knew what else shrieking in his ears. "Shields are down to three percent!"

McCoy glanced over at the would be captain, wondering why he wasn't issuing any orders. And then he blinked.

Jim was leaning forward in his chair, his eyebrows knit together, and he was staring at the front display like he wanted to bore a hole through it with the power of his thoughts. "Initiate…" He started again. "Initiate evasion maneuver number—"

"Captain, the Klingons are firing on the Kobayashi Maru!"

McCoy has to give credit to the programmer of this simulation, whoever it was, because even if some of the affects on the bridge itself leave a whole lot to the imagination, the scene playing out in the imaginary space outside of the ship was exquisite. Every single cadet in the room seemed to hold their breath as two of the Klingon ships swooped forward in unison, pulling up just above the civilian ship before they both let loose with volleys of photon fire.

"Direct hit! And another—"

McCoy had to shield his eyes against the bright flare.

"That can't be good," someone muttered.

"Science Officer McCoy," Jim said, quietly. "Scan the Kobayashi Maru."

McCoy snorted. "You're kidding."

"Bones!"

McCoy glanced down at his computer, he pressed a few buttons and then he smacked the damn thing. "Working on it," he said, trying again. "Just—there." By some miracle the words KOBAYASHI M. had come up. "The hull integrity is intact, but…" The display shifted again, and McCoy wondered if someone upstairs wasn't lending him a hand. "… their life support system has been knocked completely offline, along with all the power they have left. If anyone survived the explosion they have minutes on the outside."

"Damnit!" Jim swears, loudly, and there was an awkward pause across the bridge, punctuated by the whoops of the red alert.

"Sir, the Klingons are turning their attention to us."

"Initiate standard evasion maneuvers!"

"Engineering is reporting we don't have enough power to perform beyond the—"

"Then fire on the ships!"

"Our weapons were damaged in the Klingon's third assault. And they're moving in."

Jim's face was white. McCoy would've had to have seen it to believe it, but his friend has gone pale as a sheet, even if he was trying to hide it—he was still drumming on the armrests, and he said, "There _has_ to be something we can do, they wouldn't give us a test we couldn't beat!"

"Jim," McCoy said. "You don't surrender to Klingons. It's over. You lost."

"_Not yet,"_ Jim snapped, and every conversation across the bridge—because the cadets were starting to chat, they'd already assumed they were finished here. Now everyone was fixing Jim with the most curious looks. "Uhura, hail the Kobayashi Maru."

"Um, Captain…"

"Just do it!"

"They're dead, Jim! They're all dead!" McCoy's computer was telling him something, loudly, but hell if he was going to pay that any attention when he was standing not five feet away from what was shaping up to be a train wreck—the real, human kind. "Didn't you hear me say that?"

"The Klingons are arming their weapons again!"

"What is the _point_ of this?" Jim directed his question pointedly at the one-way glass. "Tell me, what's the _point?"_

The bridge went dark.

"—_Cadet Kirk_," Captain Meyers said over the intercom. "_You and your crew are dead. Your ship is destroyed. There are no survivors. This test is over_."

Jim slumped almost imperceptibly. McCoy was probably the only one who was looking.

"—_Most of you did very well_," the Captain continued. The other cadets were filing out of the room already, with the exception of Jim, who hadn't moved. "—_Though we need to debrief Cadet Kirk on his performance as acting captain, the rest of the cadets are free to leave_."

McCoy took the hint, stepping away from his computer and heading for the door. But Jim looked so … _sad_ sitting there, and maybe even a bit shaken up. It was bizarre, to say the least, and so he couldn't help lingering a bit beside the captain's chair. "Jim," he tried.

Jim grunted in response.

McCoy decided to go for the blunt route, because that's what always penetrated. "That wasn't like you," he said. "You froze up."

Jim didn't answer.

"Why?" That didn't illicit a response either, something McCoy noted with irritation. "Damnit, Jim, are you alright or aren't you?"

That snapped him out of … whatever it was. Jim looked up at him. "I thought … For a second I thought I felt it. A little bit. It wasn't real but that must've been what it felt like."

McCoy still had no idea what he was talking about. "Must've been what _what_ felt like?" He regretted that always immediately, because of course the second the words left his mouth he remembered—and then he felt a sudden rush of anger, because who the hell thought it was a good idea to let Jim _Kirk_ pretend to captain a doomed spaceship and not give him a word of warning?

Jim stood up. "Don't worry," he said, which was a pointless thing to throw in, when he was acting like he was. "I'm going to beat this stupid test."

McCoy hesitated. "I believe you, Jim," he said, even though he didn't.

*


End file.
